Misplaced Reliquary: Project Description
A handheld personal cabinet of curiosity. A collection of rodent's
bones, avian beaks and papery carapaces. They are sloughed, dropped or exposed
and the game lies in collection. Not collection within a machine or some
bitmapped construct, but collection that occurs within the field, on
the
hunt for misplaced
relics of the animal saintyard. This
collection
of
relics
and their holy travels will be catalouged and contained within a virtual repository
which
will
take
the form
of
a gameboy
advance ROM that can be viewed and "played" online. In addition,
instructions will be given for downloading the ROM file itself and installing
on gameboy advance hardware. Finally, an artist's edition
of 5 game cartridges will be created as well.

"I became interested in the idea of approaching game appliances in
a state pre-literate
of the aesthetic and cultural baggage of which they are
commonly associated. This approach toward the subject matter is not mirrored
in the other movements mentioned, where the aesthetics and culture of video
games are often critiqued or commented upon. For me, the appropriation of technology
is about rethinking its use, creating hybrids that are not so easily contained,
explained or pigeonholed. This is precisely what is attractive about working
on hybrids to me: they defy classification and must be met on their own terms.
Without a lexicon or prior conceptual framework to draw upon, the ideas must
hold themselves up all on their own." (for a full
version
of this essay, please look here)

This essay will be published in March 2004 in the book: Computer
Games and Art: Intersections and Interactions – edited by Grethe Mitchell
and Andy Clarke as part of the Anomalie book series.

I had not set out to create artwork by appropriating the technology of video
games. My use of the Gameboy Advance (GBA) as a framework for artistic expression
evolved as an almost incidental result of an experience I had with a single-channel
video installation I created in 2000 entitled Come Hither. This installation
incorporated a short video loop of a beckoning finger displayed on a 3” LCD
screen – an intimate format that forced the viewer to come within inches
of the screen to experience the work one on one. While the realization of
this project accomplished what I had hoped, the technical solution was far
from adequate. In order to keep the video loop in constant motion I was required
to rig a series of long cables that snaked through walls and over ceilings
leading to remote VCR or DVD decks that only ensured a troublesome, laborious
and inflexible installation. I came away from that piece with a question:
can I create a compact device without any moving parts that can play short
loops of video on a relatively small, flat screen? The best case would be
a simple, self-contained unit that could be installed consistently and with
a minimum of destruction to the gallery. This quest was met with many helpful
and inventive suggestions, but it was increasingly obvious at the time that
almost all of the solutions would require me to become an engineer to solve.

The answer came months later in an unrelated conversation. A close friend and
game developer told me that he was creating custom video games for the GBA
without a licensed development kit. Since I have some experience with game
development from a professional standpoint, the implications of this were not
opaque. As we discussed some of the difficulties of developing for the GBA
it became clear that this device could potentially provide an answer to the
technical issues raised in Come Hither. Clearly, a pre-existing and professionally
engineered solution would be more stable than any device I might create on
my own. The widespread availability and relatively inexpensive cost per unit
also factored in as strengths in favor of experimenting with the device. Additionally,
the fact that home-brew game developers had already reverse-engineered the
device and were freely distributing development kits meant that I could begin
exploring the artistic capacities in a tangible way in a matter of days, rather
than months. I felt that the most difficult barriers that might stop me were
out of the way. As with many experiments, this did not turn out to be entirely
true, but I had already decided that it was worth pursuing to see what turned
up.

At the time, I had several aquariums in my studio where I recorded the creatures
with web-cams, listened to the sound of the tanks and generally pondered the
world inside the glass. Aquatic creatures have long been a source of inspiration
to me: the alien forms, vacant or invisible facial expressions imply internal
dialogues, imaginary cultures and mythologies that percolate within my work.
From my observations and experiments arose the interest to create virtual fish-tanks.
Not simulations of aquariums, but enclosures that housed trapped fish or at
least their lingering digital ghosts. The installation that resulted from these
explorations became Super Ichthyologist Advance. Drawn to parallels with the
collection of Pokemon, I felt that the device itself provided interesting associations – although
I have since been looking for ways to distance my ideas from the GBA as purely
a game device. In practice, the GBA offers a flexible solution to the technical
issues raised in Come Hither, evidenced by Super Ichthyologist Advance, a flexible
installation that can be set up in under ten minutes, regardless of venue.

In addition to sparking new areas of personal exploration, creating and exhibiting
Super Ichthyologist Advance brought into focus for me several emerging artistic
movements utilizing video-game aesthetics, technology and culture as a jumping
off point for creative discourse. The Gameboy Advance is just one device in
a vast sea of gaming appliances that litter living rooms, dormitories and backpacks.
Whether home-consoles or portable devices, these appliances hold an iconic
status to a generation of game players. Perhaps for this reason alone, there
are a growing number of artists, researchers and experimentalists who are reinventing
the conceptual boundaries for which these devices were first envisioned. Many
are using the language, aesthetics and technology of video games to critique
popular culture. Others have used them to create musical instruments, audio-visual
noise generators or used the aesthetics of video game culture as a jumping
off point for reflection within completely unrelated media forms.

I myself became interested in the idea of approaching game appliances in a
state pre-literate of the aesthetic and cultural baggage of which they are
commonly associated. This approach toward the subject matter is not mirrored
in the other movements mentioned, where the aesthetics and culture of video
games are often critiqued or commented upon. For me, the appropriation of technology
is about rethinking its use, creating hybrids that are not so easily contained,
explained or pigeonholed. This is precisely what is attractive about working
on hybrids to me: they defy classification and must be met on their own terms.
Without a lexicon or prior conceptual framework to draw upon, the ideas must
hold themselves up all on their own.

There are critical issues raised by this approach toward rethinking the use
for a technology so heavily burdened by itself. In contrast to Come Hither,
where the device is a neutral vessel for my ideas that implies none of the
conceptual baggage from its previous existence, the use of the GBA in Super
Ichthyologist Advance is a different story. One idea kicked about involved
reducing down to the essential electronics and building custom housing that
would not appear to be a GBA at first glance – but the disembodied device
would still show the inescapable Nintendo logo when starting up. Therefore
I find myself at odds with my own purposes: to approach the game appliance
in a state pre-literate of games themselves, using a device that inherently
references games.

Intrinsic to any game appliance is the ability to accept and respond to user
input, an aspect of the GBA that I had not considered exploring in Super Ichthyologist
Advance. After gaining experience working with the GBA for displaying short
video loops it became obvious that the inherent interactive aspects of the
device were equally accessible on a technical level. What began as a solution
for multi-channel video installations has grown into a wellspring of inspiration
whereupon I find myself imagining galleries that fit in your pocket, personal
handheld theatres, digital Cornell boxes and electronic books imbued with the
intimacy of Chinese scroll paintings.

Played Online?
For the online display of this piece, I will be using a java-based
gameboy advance emulator (boycott advance online) which allows for GBA ROMS to
be played within a web browser.